Personal Compuer Games


Tetrapod
By Acornsoft
BBC Model B

 
Published in Personal Computer Games #11

Tetrapod

Creepy crawlies have wriggled their wiggly way into Asteroids to come up with this entertaining game in which your zapping must have at least a little finesse to succeed.

As in good old Asteroids, you control a trianglular ship which can be rotated left and right or impelled using the thrust control. But in Tetrapod your laser fire is not directed at mere rocks. This time you face the Killer Bees, opponents whose name bears no relation to their form as they too are triangular ships. They can be killed by a direct hit from your laser or - and here's where it gets interesting - by a lizard.

These creatures are inside the many pods scattered around the screen. When you hit a pod the lizard hatches out and pursues the creature nearest it. Pretty good if your aim is true, but pretty nasty if you go astray and find yourself being gobbled up.

Tetrapod

Beginners will find disaster hard to avoid since nothing is wasted in this game: bullets bounce around until they hit something, and that something might just be you.

The Killer Bees, though, will not present too many problems. But once you've got rid of them you come up against the Red Devil - a square creature with legs - who can only be killed by the lizards.

If you try to shoot him, he will become enraged and pursue you with even more determination. The next screen features the Poison Orbs who behave in a simiarly intransigent fashion.

Tetrapod

Movement is smooth and the graphics are clear and colourful - the sound, though, is just the usual Beeb beeps and drones. But Tetrapod is a very playable game that can get exciting on later screens as more and more opponents appear and large numbers of bullets whizz around.

Bob Wade

Weird isn't the word for this game - the author must have been sniffing Vim before writing it and I think it has paid off.

The mutating tennis balls and their alter ego the electric toothbrushes are great ideas and nicely drawn too.

Tetrapod

It was great the way everything always comes back to you, whatever you do. You can't blast away endlessly or go zooming about the screen.

Simon Chapman

Certainly one of the better new releases from Acornsoft. The graphics are smooth and I loved the way the lizards ran the aliens down. Only four keys to use, nice and simple, but the price should be lower. I suppose it's a kind of mutant Asteroids but it has a definite quality of its own. I think I'm going to have *one more* go...

Rob Patrick

I loved this game. It combined all the elements of an arcade game and threw in a touch of strategy for luck.

I stuck to the keyboard for hours with this and enjoyed every minute. Smoother movement I have rarely seen, and the sound was good without being obstructive.

Peter Connor

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